MovieChat Forums > La rafle (2010) Discussion > Good movie, shame about the hair.

Good movie, shame about the hair.

posted 12 years ago by Undutchable1939
8 replies | jump to latest

It looks pretty good most of the time, sometimes you see things that look horrendously out of place, totally un-1940s.
And there are always people who say that details don't matter and movies aren't documentaries, well I don't agree.
Whatever you do, do it right.
When you spot mistakes in movies, that just means someone did not do their job right.
For instance, I got terribly annoyed by the hairstyles, the women look great, almost all their hairstyles look great, typical of the era, well done.
Yet all the men and boys look like they came from the 1970s with a timemachine.
Much too long.

I also feel the scenes with Hitler are a waste of time and money.
They look silly and cheap, don't add anything to the story.

Having said that, good to see a story about this subject, it is interesting, reasonably well acted, set dressing is all right and some scenes are moving and look impressive.
In the end this is a very interesting, shocking, important story that needed to be told.
So watch it anyway and just ignore the mens hair styles.

[–] journeybear 12 years ago

Didn't really notice the hair - lots of other, more compelling stuff going on - but I agree with you about the scenes with Hitler. I understand the need to contrast, but the notion of Hitler being on vacation all the time in the middle of a war is weird and incomprehensible. Plus why is only Himmler with him? Don't the other guys get these perks too? These scenes take a bit of the luster of the film and keep this from being a truly great movie. Still the best movie I have seen this season, and the best on this subject since Shoah.

[–] poserpro 11 years ago

I didn't care about their hairstyles either, it won't kill the overall.

As for the Hitler scenes on vacation, I think it related or connected to the initial documentary black and white footage at the beginning of this movie, coz there are indeed documentary films about he hung around in the balcony of the site with his family and other Nazi officials, at least I had watched the footage from Discovery Channel. His antisemitism is the key to the fate of the Jewish families in this film, and Vichy government just added fuel to the flame of holocaust.

[–] amazing_anne90 10 years ago

It's a holocaust movie and you're complaining about the hair? Out of all the things to complain about you pick the hair.

[–] Undutchable1939 10 years ago

If you make a historical movie about something so important, you should try and get every aspect of the story right.
Making sure that the historical atmosphere and situation is faithfully and correctly recreated plays a big part in how realistic it appears.
Everything is important, this one just stood out.

Complaining about mistakes is almost as bad as complaining about complaining about mistakes.

[–] Doodlebuger 8 years ago

The hairstyle was not even wrong, people wore long hair at the time, that is middle long, nothing like the really long seen in the 70's.
My father was a fireman and he wore his hair just as the men in the movie (I have plenty of pictures). And what about Jean Reno ? He wore very short hair.

[–] Undutchable1939 8 years ago

There are always exceptions that prove the rule.
But as a historian specialised in the era, I have seen and examined thousands of pictures of that era and pretty much all men wore their hair short back and sides.
If your father had long hair that touched the collar of his uniform (as a fireman he would probably had gotten in trouble for that) he is one of the exceptions.
Look at other pictures besides those of him.

Jean Reno's hair is on the edge, bit long in the back, but passable.

[–] frydman 8 years ago

So you think that these victims had time for a haircut..

[–] Undutchable1939 8 years ago

Of course they had.
The film starts with regular people living in France during the occupation, not at the time when they've already been imprisoned.
Regular life went on as before right up to the razzias started, look at other WW2 photos of that time, that place and even that event and compare.